19 July 2012

Compared to Dolce & Gabbana’s last collection for Fall 2012 (fashion writer Tim Blanks called it “opulent gilded arrogance”), Spring 2013 is less glamorous and a lot more approachable. Two things impress me about the new
collection: the generously-fitted, softly-tailored pieces
reminiscent of my favourite Italian designer Giorgio Armani, and the casting
of models who aren’t an army of clone hunks with standard issue 8-packs and identically angled jaws.

The refreshing variety of male models lends the clothes a greater empathy than they would have otherwise possessed. I never cared much for D&G before because I couldn’t identify
with their regular models. I’m not 6 feet tall with a classically
handsome face and the musculature of a Greco-Roman god (well, only on Tuesdays),
and the clothes were usually cut to fit this masculine ideal. Altering their
proportions to suit someone of my diminutive stature would only make me look
like some runty kid wearing clothes that are too grown up for him. This ill-fitted
‘look’ may have a certain insouciant charm to it (like much of the D&G spring collection), but I would feel awkward in clothes
that seem forced on me.

A selection from Dolce & Gabbana Spring 2013:

I’m also very much liking D&G’s recent ad campaigns. The
semi-sepia and colour photographs of multi-generational Italians (including the
delightful Monica Bellucci) in traditional clothes with a D&G update are heartwarming
and tender. I do prefer the understated designs and muted colours of heritage
Italian menswear over the loud, busy patterns found in traditional British and
American styles. Give me plain pinstripes over tartan, houndstooth or glen
plaid any day.

18 July 2012

I have no
issue with Muslim women choosing to wear the hijab. Even
within the constraints of their faith, there seems to be enough latitude for
them to exercise stylish self-expression with the hair-covering fabric. I can also respect their wish to dress modestly, even though I
find their idea of ‘modest’ to be rather excessive. Compared to the niqab
or the burqa, the hijab is arguably a less oppressive –
certainly less dismal – garment that doesn’t erase its wearer’s identity.

The hijab can be chic.

But none of
this should imply that the hijab is free from oppressive connotations. Let’s
not kid ourselves; it isn’t. Being a Muslim garment, the
hijab is inevitably bound to the doctrines of Islam, including those that
render women second-rate human beings who should be subservient to men. It’s
one thing for a woman to wear a hijab of her own volition, quite another when
that same woman misrepresents her choice as being something that it is not: an unequivocal
act of liberation.

17 July 2012

Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children are
exploiting a loophole in the recently scrapped Maternity Immunisation Allowance
(MIA) scheme that lets them receive government payments despite not vaccinating
their kids. The MIA was axed by the Gillard government at the start of this
month, but parents who are eligible for it can still claim payments until 30
June 2013. Part of the criteria for eligibility is that their child “is fully
immunised or has an approved exemption by 30 June 2012.” And one type of ‘approved
exemption’ is for parents who are ‘conscientious objectors’ to
child vaccination.

Why are Australian taxpayers giving their tax money to
parents who insist on exposing other children to the risk of (totally preventable)
disease? Anti-vaxers and organisations that promote their cause like the misleadingly
named Australian Vaccination Network are ignorant populists who spread lies and
misinformation about vaccines. Their attitude towards child vaccinations,
far from being simply a matter of personal choice, has a harmful impact on
others. By choosing not to vaccinate their kids, these irresponsible parents
compromise the herd immunity effect that protects the larger population from
diseases like whooping cough, meningitis and measles. That they are demanding to be paid by the government for doing this is utterly disgraceful.

Anti-vaxers are usually not qualified to speak with any
authority on the subject of vaccines and their effects. Yet medical experts
who are qualified to discuss the issue are constantly having to defend their position from ‘concerned parents’ who haven’t got a clue
about immunology or epidemiology, and also lack good critical thinking skills.
Anti-vax arguments rely on appeals to emotion, appeals to nature, the
post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, cherry picking of facts and using anecdotal evidence
rather than hard data and solid statistics.

Steven Novella has written about the problem of anti-vax attitudes among the general public. It’s a US-centric perspective, but Novella’s
points apply to anywhere in the world where science and reason are meeting
resistance from ignorance, lies and irrationality.

11 July 2012

Kenan Malik is a critic of a purely science-based morality,
the sort promoted by thinkers like Sam Harris in his book The Moral Landscape (2010). Malik doesn’t believe that ethical issues are amenable to
scientific reductionism. In his review of The Moral Landscape,
he makes this criticism of Harris’s ideal morality:

Moral norms seem not to emerge through a
process of social engagement and collective conversation, nor in the course of
self-improvement, but rather are laws to be revealed from on high [by science]
and imposed upon those below.

Malik recently wrote a blog post expanding on his analogy of
scientific morality as revealed laws (the religious connotation is made obvious
in the title of his post). Again, he challenges the assumptions of those like
Harris who view morality as simply being a question of facts,
which science can discover and present, indisputable. Malik mentions the
bioethicist Julian Savulescu, who has argued in favour of a benign form of eugenics that will remove the “genes and proteins associated with poor impulse
control as well as those for psychopathy and anti-social personality disorder”
while promoting “genes for compassion and moral thinking.”

So far, so controversial.

I am inclined to adopt the scientific view of morality as espoused
by Harris and Savulescu, though it is to Malik’s credit that his
counter-arguments have made me reexamine my position, if not entirely abandon it. I think that when one accepts
a materialist conception of human personality (or the mind), one has to also accept
that neurobiological manipulation can alter people's character traits. So why
not do so to make them more moral?

Malik rebuts Savulescu’s idea of positive eugenics with
examples of how nominally bad traits like aggression can be good in the right
context, and vice-versa for nominally good traits like trust and co-operation.
He writes:

But is it a good that trust be enhanced in
all circumstances? After all, would not authoritarian regimes and even
democratic politicians welcome a more trustful, and therefore a less
questioning, population? Is aggression always bad? Is the aggression that
the Arab masses have shown, and continue to show, in taking to the streets in
defiance of brutal authoritarian regimes equivalent to the aggression of
those authorities in brutalising and murdering the protestors? And if not
does it make any sense to suggest, as Savulescu does, that ‘our futures may
depend upon making ourselves wiser and less aggressive’, including through the ‘compulsory’
use of serotonin [a neurotransmitter that contributes to feelings of happiness and well-being]?

Good points. But as I responded in a comment to Malik’s
post, what about undeniably pernicious traits like a propensity for sexual
predation or rape? For violent psychopathy or homicidal urges? I wrote:

If one accepted a materialist conception
of the mind, then wouldn’t it be an uncontroversial good to use
medical/scientific means to purge these sorts of tendencies from people? And if
you answer “no”, what would be the moral justification for letting a portion of
society continually pose a (perhaps fatal) risk to others?

Malik replied that my question was an important one that “gets
to the heart of the debate about what we mean by a ‘materialist view of the
mind’”, and that he will write a proper post on this topic soon, hopefully
within the next few days. I look forward to his (very likely persuasive) answer
to the rather utilitarian dilemma my question poses. Stay tuned!

Some 50 to 60 million years ago, during the Paleogene
period, Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity, when highly fluid
molten basalt
intruded through chalk beds to form an extensive lava plateau. As the lava
cooled rapidly, contraction occurred. Horizontal contraction
fractured in a similar way to drying mud, with the cracks propagating down as
the mass cooled, leaving pillarlike structures, which are also fractured
horizontally into “biscuits”. In many cases the horizontal fracture has
resulted in a bottom face that is convex while the upper face of the lower
segment is concave, producing what are called “ball and socket” joints. The
size of the columns is primarily determined by the speed at which lava from a
volcanic eruption cools. The extensive fracture network produced the
distinctive columns seen today. The basalts were originally part of a great volcanic
plateau called the Thulean
Plateau which formed during the Paleogene
period.

These are the facts. But the newly built visitors centre at
the Giant’s Causeway will also include a creationist
explanation of the area’s geology. The UK’s National Trust, custodian of
landmarks like the Giant’s Causeway, has allowed the creationist Caleb
Foundation to promote their religious views alongside the scientific facts in one
of the centre’s exhibits. Contradicting the facts given above, visitors will be
told that the Giant’s Causeway is a result of the Biblical flood 4500 years
ago.

The National Trust said that its decision to include
creationist lies was because it wanted to “reflect and respect” the fact that
some ignorant religionists reject the findings of “mainstream” science, which refute the teachings of their holy book. It’s political
correctness gone mad.

This is a misguided attempt to create ‘debate’ where there
should be none. As PZ Myers puts it in his typically forthright manner:

Just because idiots disagree with science
doesn’t mean there is a serious debate. There is no scientific argument over
whether the earth is less than 10,000 years old or more than 4 billion, just as
there is no scientific debate over whether stars are little holes punched in
the firmament, or whether the moon is a great wheel of cheese drifting
overhead.

Shame on the National Trust for pandering to religious stupidity.
By respecting creationist nonsense, it disrespects the intelligent, curious
people visiting a remarkable site.

05 July 2012

Human rights activist Maryam Namazie
has a blog post about a ‘letter to the editor’
whose writer displays a contemptible sort of cultural relativism. In his letter
responding to a petition for Indonesian atheist Alexander Aan’s release from
prison (Aan was found guilty of blasphemy for posting atheist statements on
Facebook), Raymond Carlise writes:

I have considered
Edward Conduit’s appeal to sign the petition in defence of the Indonesian
atheist who has been jailed for saying there is no God, but have concluded that
I cannot sign [the] Avaaz petition for Alex.

There may well be no God for Alex,
as for you or for me. With the Indonesians however it’s evidently a different
matter. The limits of subjectivity and of objectivity have to be
recognized.

So Raymond Carlise is an atheist who
thinks that non-Indonesians have no business telling Indonesians to respect the
human rights and civil liberties of their fellow citizens. How magnanimous of
him! Clearly for Carlise the “limits of subjectivity and of objectivity”
preclude freedom of thought and expression for Indonesian atheists like Alex
Aan. Carlise is basically saying to Alex, “You did this to yourself, so tough luck.”

Liberals who share Carlise’s
cultural relativism seem blind to the double standards they’re championing.
They totally heart those wonderful things called ‘human rights’ and ‘civil
liberties’, but hey, if a different culture doesn’t think they’re all that
wonderful, more power to it! Who cares if other societies
jail atheists/mutilate the genitals of girls/deny women the vote? My own
enlightened society doesn’t (phew!), and that’s all that matters to me.

These same liberals are likely to be
infected with the postmodernist idea that any one culture’s moral norms are
just as valid as those of others, including those of the
so-called West. To believe otherwise is to be a racist, a cultural bigot. But
atheist writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali points out that it’s actually the
opposite – cultural relativists are the ones being
racist, for their refusal to oppose practices like persecution of atheists and
female genital mutilation (FGM) condemns non-Westerners to pain and suffering
that Westerners wouldn’t tolerate for their own cultural
group.

Here’s a video from the Global Atheist
Convention held in Melbourne earlier this year, where Hirsi Ali joins Richard
Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris for a panel discussion. Hirsi Ali makes
her argument that cultural relativism can become a form of racism (and worse) at time mark
0:07:13.

Referring to FGM carried out
by British Muslims while a ‘culturally sensitive’ government allows it to
happen for fear of being thought racist or Islamophobic, Hirsi Ali says:

If you think
through the logic of racism, if little [Muslim] girls of seven, eight years old cannot
be protected by British law, then you start to wonder what exactly is racist.
If the genitals of little white girls were being cut off,
there would be enormous outrage.

Cultural relativists like Raymond
Carlise should seriously reconsider their position. If they think that they occupy the moral high ground by refusing to judge the moral failings of
another culture, they’re only fooling themselves. Don’t be like Carlise. Sign the petition calling for Alex Aan’s release, or write to the Indonesian government
to let them know that human rights are for everyone, not
just privileged Western liberals.